Ebook wait

All these usages aim
at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead and its
inmates and storing it up for another year.
The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries
us back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and
squalid quarter of the great metropolis, was still a separate
village, whose inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest on the
harvest-field with their neighbours of Rome, then a little rural
town. The Field of Mars on which the ceremony took place lay beside
the Tiber, and formed part of the king's domain down to the
abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran that at the time when
the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn stood ripe for
the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one would eat
the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in such heaps
that, the water being low with the summer heat, it formed the
nucleus of an island. The horse sacrifice was thus an old autumn
custom observed upon the king's corn-fields at the end of the
harvest.


Pages:
1320 1321 1322 1323 1324 1325 1326 1327 1328 1329 1330 1331 1332 1333 1334 1335 1336 1337 1338 1339 1340 1341 1342 1343 1344